


sleep light, sleep tight

by siojo



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baby Ace, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Roger the stay at home dad, Rouge is over worked, Rouge the over worked lawyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-31 23:03:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10909275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siojo/pseuds/siojo
Summary: Rouge is already sure that she's late, late enough that she's going to be fired. She can't believe Roger didn't wake her up on time.





	sleep light, sleep tight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RockingTheGraveyard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockingTheGraveyard/gifts).



> this has been on my tumblr for forever, but now, i'm finally starting to move all my fics and drabbles over here! wish me luck.

Rouge groans as she rolls onto her side, the ache of her shoulder from where she’s been hunched over her desk at work for what felt like years the past few weeks increasing before evening out. It hurts and she wants to roll back over onto her stomach, but the sun is almost too bright and her stomach drops. Her eyes burn as she opens them, from the long hours spent reading pages of tiny print and the lack of sleep, blinking away the blurring of her vision to read the numbers on the alarm clock.

She’s late.

She’s so late that it’s not even funny, almost four hours late to work, horror rising in her chest.

Rouge should be getting up, should be getting up and throwing on her clothes and calling the office to beg her boss to not fire her because she needs this job and it won’t happen again if Rouge has to buy ten alarms to ensure she never sleeps through another one again.

“Mama?”

Rouge bites her tongue and holds herself still, eyes closing even as tears start to sting the edges of her eyes.

“Mama up? Up mama!”

“Hush firefly,” Roger whispers, the bed behind her shifting as he sits down on it, probably lifting Ace into his lap or on the bed. “Hush, mama needs to sleep, remember?”

“Mama sweep?”

Normally, Ace’s lisp is adorable. It makes Rouge want to coo and make him talk more just to hear him, but now it makes her want to curl up into a little ball. It makes her want to vomit because she doesn’t have enough money to lose her job, not when Roger’s freelance work isn’t enough to keep the bills paid. It would take ages to get a new job if she was fired, if she wasn’t blacklisted.

“That’s right, mama sleep,” Roger agrees. “Mama is tired and Daddy pulled a lot of strings to make sure that mama could have the day off. So, we’re going to let mama sleep and then, when she wakes up, we’ll give her the breakfast that we made for her.”

“Bay-con!”

Roger laughs and the bed shifts as Ace shrieks with laughter like he always does when Roger throws him up into the air, “That’s right bacon. Now, let’s let your mama sleep, firefly, she’s tired and we can let her sleep until lunch time. Unless she wakes up on her own first.”

“Wuv you, mama,” Ace’s little hand pats Rouge’s back the same way that she pats his when she is trying to get him to go to sleep. “Sweep wight, mama.”

“Sleep tight, firefly, not sleep light,” Roger corrects. “Now, I think we can have some bacon of our very own, what do you think?”

“Bay-can!”

Roger laughs and Rouge almost smiles, heart still beating too fast in her chest from the panic that had overwhelmed her in the moments after seeing the clock and hearing the explanation from Roger. She relaxes slight when the door closes, Roger obviously trying to close it softly to avoid waking her up.

There’s still several hours before lunchtime, when Roger had said that they would wake her up, enough time to fit in a nap. She closes her eyes and tries to fall back asleep for almost twenty minutes before sliding out of bed and rubbing her eyes.

It’s still early enough to be wearing pajamas, so Rouge doesn’t change, instead slipping down the hallway to the kitchen and leaning against the doorframe to watch Roger and Ace, smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Roger’s mustache is dripping syrup from one side and his cheek and forehead are smeared in flour and something that’s flaking from his skin, Rouge thinks that it might be pancake batter, a strip of bacon hanging from his mouth as he broke a second piece into smaller pieces for Ace to eat.

“Bay-con!”

“Bacon.”

“Bay-can!”

“Ba-con.”

Ace pouts for a long moment before catching sight of her in the doorway, smile going bright once more, “Mama!”

“This is bacon,” Roger says in confusion. “Not your … Rouge?”

“Morning,” Rouge says smiling at them both. “I thought I was going to work.”

Roger nods, “You’ve been really busy recently, so I thought that you could use a day off instead, and since you said that you needed to use some of your sick days, I called you out for the day. Your boss says that if you want to take tomorrow too that he was more than willing to give it, and the rest of the week, if you called in yourself.”

“You did?”

Roger grins, “Ace thought it was a good idea.”

“Well if it was Ace’s idea,” Rouge says grinning. “Hello, my firefly, Are you having fun with your daddy today?”

“Bay-can!” Ace answers, one little hand holding up a piece for her, eyes wide. “Mama bay-can?”

“No, thank you. That is Ace’s bacon, not Mama’s. Mama will get her own bacon.”

“Bay-can?” Ace’s lower lip wobbles like it always does before he starts to cry, eyes wide and watery. Rouge sighs, leaning over and eating it before Ace can start crying. Ace laughs, clapping his hands excitedly. “Mama!”

Rouge smiles, brushing the hair from his face, “You’re gonna need a haircut soon firefly, unless you want long hair.”

“Wike mama?”

“Like mama.”

Sometimes Rouge is surprised by the connections that Ace can make and how smart he is. Roger never is, but he also spends all day with their son instead of the few hours a week that Rouge can eek out on the weekends between work and taking care of things that she has to and can’t shove off on Roger for him to do.

“Want wike mama.”

You want hair like mama?” Rouge asks accepting the plate that Roger passes her. “Well I think that we can do that if you wanted, can’t we, Roger?”

“You would look good with long hair,” Roger whispers to Ace, grinning. “Very handsome.”

“Wike mama!”

Rouge laughs, “Like mama.”

Ace nods, like that’s the most important aspect of the whole conversation, that he looked like his mama at the end of the day, before devouring his bacon happily and moving onto his pancakes, all cut up and dripping syrup. It almost makes Rouge’s teeth ache.

“Thank you,” Rouge whispers leaning against Roger’s side. “For calling out for me and making breakfast.”

“It was Ace’s idea,” Roger admits.

“Oh?”

Roger nods, “He’s been asking for days to make breakfast for his mama. He wanted to make bacon and pancakes and to have something nice for you. He picked the flowers,” Rouge glances at the vase of wildflowers and flowers that could only been from the little garden that Roger kept in the backyard. “He was very insistent that there would be flowers.”

“Fowers mama,” Ace pipes up. “Mama wikes fowers?”

Rouge smiles, “I love my flowers, Ace. Thank you.”

“Wewcome mama!”

Rouge grins and takes a bite of her breakfast, humming happily. It was nice being able to have a day for herself and her family. She would have to see if she wanted to take another day tomorrow. She hadn’t taken a day off since Ace had been born, she could have a few now, it wouldn’t be that big a deal.

“Mama!”

“Ace!”

She missed her son and husband. She was glad to have a day with them.


End file.
